The release of the Black Widow movie has been long-awaited for Marvel fans, and that wait continues to feel longer and longer as the Black Widow release keeps getting pushed back due to COVID-19. For now, all fans have to go off of is some trailers, and a vague idea about what themes the Black Widow movie might touch on.
The last time that Natasha Romanoff was seen on-screen was in Avengers: Endgame, where she sacrificed her life in order for the team to obtain the Soul Stone and be able to reverse Thanos’s snap. It was a very powerful moment where a founding member of the original Avengers team gave up her life for the fate of the Earth. However, there’s a chance that the direction that her solo movie takes might undermine this idea of sacrifice and family, if Black Widow takes the route that it seems to be hinting towards.
The trailer for Black Widow features many new characters, including Yelena Belova (played by Florence Pugh), Melina Vostokoff (played by Rachel Weisz), and David Harbour’s Alexei Shostkov (Red Guardian). It seems that the film will explore what Natasha did in between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, but also dive into her past as a spy a little bit more, and specifically focus on the people that she left behind when she quit that lifestyle.
In the trailer, Yelena refers to Natasha as her sister, and Alexei calls the group “family,” though it remains to be seen whether any of these ties are biological or if they simply see each other as family because of bonding through shared tough experiences. While it’s nice to see Natasha have these ties to her past, and that they are a support system for her in the film, it really undermines her Endgame storyline.
In Endgame, Natasha claims that she had nothing before she had the Avengers, and that they are her family. This is what makes her sacrifice so potent and moving – she is giving her own life so that her family, and the world, can continue. Her arc throughout the movie is heavily reliant on her seeing the Avengers as the only family she has left, and having those deep ties to her teammates.
Black Widow will complicate this dynamic if it focuses on her relationship with these people from her past, especially if she sees them as family. Her claim of having nothing before the Avengers will be contradicted if she is shown to have that close, familial relationship with this group in the Black Widow movie. It might even make Natasha’s final sacrifice less impactful, because the Avengers weren’t, in fact, her only family. It makes her conversation with Steve near the beginning of the movie less emotional, because joining the Avengers might not have actually saved her from being completely alone in life.
Even if it does not totally undermine that emotional beat in Endgame, Natasha having a family prior to the Avengers is still an odd choice for Marvel to make, because it contradicts such a big plotline for such a major character. Of course, it’s entirely possible that they could resolve this issue by the end of Black Widow, by having something happen to that familial dynamic. Perhaps these other members of Natasha’s group all betray her, or die, or something else ends up dividing them all and Natasha is alone once again. This is the only way the movie could end without contradicting most of Natasha’s arc in Endgame, which would be a massive mistake for Marvel.
However, ending the film in that way would still feel a bit cheap, as though Marvel only introduced these characters just to have some sort of story to give Natasha, only to get rid of them when they become inconvenient to the overarching plot. Because of this, it’s unlikely that Marvel will end the movie with entirely getting rid of all of these new characters. More importantly, Florence Pugh is set to return as Yelena in the Hawkeye series on Disney Plus, so clearly Black Widow isn’t the last we’ll see of her.
It’s definitely strange that Marvel is seemingly contradicting such a major plot point in one of their biggest movies, because at this point it seems like there’s no way that the storyline in Black Widow won’t totally undermine Natasha’s Endgame arc. It’s almost as though they were really struggling to come up with a story for a solo movie for Natasha Romanoff and were willing to contradict a prior movie in order to have something that is interesting and emotional.
Since this is only the second solo Marvel film to star one of their female heroes, expectations are high, especially considering how long fans have wanted this movie to happen, and it would be really disappointing if the story (or the film as a whole) falls flat. It remains to be seen how much the storyline of Black Widow contradicts past Marvel entries, so fans will just have to wait and see when the film finally releases in May.
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